The last several years have witnessed a rapid growth in electronic transactions, especially those executed partly or wholly through the Internet. For example, a consumer can use the Internet to access an Internet Web site of a seller, can select a product, and can then provide identity and credit card information to the seller in order to purchase the product.
These types of transactions have led to increased concerns about various rights of privacy. In this regard, a consumer who purchases products or services through the Internet may be tracked or profiled in a way that the consumer does not intend or desire. For example, over a period of time, the consumer may make several different purchases through the Internet from a given seller. The seller can usually recognize that the orders are related, for example where they all involve use of the same credit card number, and/or where the consumer provides the same identity information for each transaction. The seller can then use this linked information to build a profile for that consumer, for example regarding the types of products purchased, brand preferences, quality preferences, buying patterns, frequency of orders, and so forth. The seller may even go so far as to use the profile to begin sending the consumer targeted advertisements that are unsolicited and unwanted. To the extent the consumer does not intend or desire that sellers engage in activity such as creating profiles or sending unsolicited advertisements, these types of activities raise privacy issues.
One technique for addressing these concerns is to provide the consumer with one or more pseudo identities, along with one or more pseudo accounts that can be used to make actual payments. When the consumer makes an electronic purchase, the consumer uses a pseudo identity and a pseudo account number, instead of providing the seller with the consumer's actual identity and actual account number. A financial institution charges the amount of the payment against the consumer's actual account, but pays the seller under the pseudo account number, without revealing the consumer's actual identity or actual account to the seller.
If the consumer makes several successive purchases from the same seller, the consumer can use a different pseudo identity and pseudo account number for each such purchase. Since these purchases would not share any common identifying information, it would appear to the seller that they originated from various different consumers. The seller would thus have no motivation or basis for recognizing that the orders are related, or for attempting to develop a single consumer profile based on the multiple orders. Under this approach, a given consumer may end up with a number of different pseudo identities and a number of different pseudo accounts. There is a need for a way to assist a consumer in effectively and efficiently handling the creation, maintenance and use of multiple pseudo identities and/or multiple pseudo accounts.
The types of electronic transactions discussed above have also caused an increase in concerns about fraud. One aspect of this is that, given the nature of the Internet, it is more difficult to determine whether a given seller is actually who he or she claims to be. And a consumer or a financial institution cannot easily tell whether a particular seller is located in the United States, or in some other country on the other side of the world, where the prevailing law may be significantly different. Another aspect is that, when a seller sends a financial institution a payment request with information such as a credit card number, the financial institution often has only a very brief period of time in which to analyze the developing transaction and to decide whether to approve or deny payment, because the consumer and seller are both waiting in real time for the decision. For example, the financial institution may need to carry out the risk analysis in only one or two seconds. There is a need to provide improved safeguards against fraud in the types of electronic transactions discussed above.